The Complete Jessy Cohen Museum

A growing publication about the CJCM in Ma'arav magazine

[...] The illusion of neutrality attributed to an archive is challenged here by the multiplicity of voices. By its very nature an archive of memories runs counter to the historical demand for a uniform and linear narrative, and appropriates dichotomy and conflict as foundations for its existence. This is an archive that contradicts itself, that evades framing, that violates archival laws. Not relying on existing findings, the narratives revealed in it are based solely on the personal experience of the people remembering, without the possibility of confirming or refuting their veracity. The past exists in it only as a longing or scar of the person telling it. [...]- A text by Gal Leshem

Why “complete” in The Complete Jessy Cohen Museum? What has “complete” to do with “museum”? People tend to omit it, as if it were a superfluous addition, a redundant curlicue. This is not the same as the omission of “Cohen” from “Jessy Cohen”, which is widespread in the neighborhood and among its acquaintances, an omission of familiarity. This is a different kind of omission, stemming from discomfort, perhaps even embarrassment. “Complete”. An ostentatious, somewhat modernistic word, boasting something it does not possess, and never will. [...]- A text by Effi & Amir

[...] In its inception, the state institution wished to be portrayed as devoid of the particularist kind of a political aspect. The “melting pot” project – a kind of a social-ideological experiment formulated in the 1950s – flew on the flag of the stately alongside the call for a “gathering of Israel” and for a “unity of the nation in its country”. [...]- A text by Yaffa Markovich